1. Field of the Presently Disclosed and Claimed Inventive Concept(s)
The presently disclosed and claimed inventive concept(s) relates generally to a product testing apparatus. More particularly, the apparatus comprises a microscope having a microscopic imaging device and at least one data processing system. The microscopic imaging device is configured to capture one or more images indicative of a sample having a substrate coating applied to a substrate. The data processing system have a processor, one or more non-transitory processor readable medium, and processor executable instructions stored on the non-transitory processor readable medium that when executed cause the processor to receive the one or more images captured by the microscopic imaging device. The processor then processes the one or more images by filtering lighting variations in the one or more images to identify one or more objects of interest in the substrate coating; quantifies the one or more objects of interest; and generates a signal indicative of the quantification of the one or more objects of interest.
2. Background and Applicable Aspects of the Presently Disclosed and Claimed Inventive Concept(s)
The coatings industry is constantly evolving to keep pace with emerging technology and consumer trends. Some such trends are TiO2 optimization, low-odor, low-voc, green materials, and sustainable materials among others which are driven by performance, cost, environmental and regulatory concerns. These trends pose challenges to formulators as well as specialty chemical companies globally to achieve performance in these new coatings systems by changing coating formulations significantly. Some examples include changes to the latex, composition and levels of rheology modifiers, coalescing agents, surfactants and glycols among others. These formulation changes generally result in increased levels of microfoam and macrofoam in manufacturing, packaging, and application of these new coatings where traditional foam control agents (FCAs) are often determined to be not efficient or efficacious enough.
These challenges drive development of new additives for foam control that are more efficient at foam destruction, but that do not adversely affect other paint film properties such as film quality, gloss, etc. During development and testing, performance of foam control additives and agents are typically assessed by methods including foam knockdown in surfactant solutions, process foam in paint, application foam in paint, and compatibility. These methods include shaker studies, closed-loop circulation tests, air entrainment, brush outs, foam taps, rollouts, bubble break by visual observation, and drawdowns to determine surface defects, gloss, color acceptance and tint strength. Foam knockdown tests in surfactant systems may not be representative of foam performance in actual paint systems. Some test methods, especially for application foam, allow differentiation between sample coating candidates but assessments within these methods are often the weakest link. The assessments are typically qualitative in nature and subjective, based on a person performing the assessment. The results are routinely expressed based on arbitrary ranking systems that are relative and differentiating between sample coating candidates is difficult.
One of the evaluation criteria of a foam control agent or additive is bubble break, which is the rate at which foam bubbles collapse. Assessment of bubble break is non-trivial and is traditionally monitored by visual observation. The bubble break is typically recorded as the time it takes for ninety to one hundred percent of the bubbles to break over a period of five minutes or expressed as a relative ranking of the rate of bubble break on an arbitrary scale. Such subjective method of evaluation lacks accuracy and repeatability. Hence, new techniques are needed to accurately characterize and differentiate foam control agent performance and provide additional insight into defoaming mechanisms.